Remember Lisa McDowell from 'Coming To America?' She has a son with a legendary rapper

by Cynthia Rita

- Celebritist has learned from I Love Old School Music that Shari Headley of Coming to America fame was at one time married to a rap legend.

- Headley was married to Play of the popular hip-hop group Kid N Play! for two years - May 1993 till June 1995.

- Their son, Skyler Martin, who was born in April of 1994, was only 1 year at the time of their divorce.

If you know Lisa McDowell of the McDowell family in the 1988 Eddie Murphy film Coming to America, then you know who Shari Headley is.

Shari Headley is famous for having played Lisa McDowell, a young woman who dumped her lazy boyfriend and began making moves to cement a relationship with an African prince.

It remains quite a mystery how Sharis relationship with Play was not well-known especially because of the fame she garnered from starring in the popular movie.

Her ex-husband, who was originally born under the name Christopher Martin, was a member of the 1980s and 90s hip-hop duo of ‘Kid N Play’, bearing the tag Play while his partner was Christopher Reid who took the first part, ‘Kid’.

The two who were rumored to have split on account of Plays infidelity.

In 2001, the rapper was reported to have been ordered to resume payment for child support to Shari to the tune of $42,000 which he was supposed to have been paying for the previous 5 years.

Play was reported to have been financially incapacitated at that point though he admitted that he was currently on $2,000 a week from his work as an actor, after which the judge ruled for the payments to resume.

Shari also alleged that her ex-husband actually moved to another state to circumvent the payments which she was especially opposed to as she was not financially well-off, according to her.

Things seemed to improve for him in 2009 when his students made a demand that Martin be returned to his position as a hip-hop teacher at the North Carolina Central University, where he was initially laid off due to budget cuts.

55-year-old Play, who was seen in a prayer pose while in court, was rumored at one time to have become a pastor, but this has not been confirmed.

Shari is now 52 years old and news on her latest endeavors reveal that she contributed to much-loved 2011 television soap opera All My Children where she played Officer Mimi Reed Frye and Jennifer Sallison in The Haves and the Have Nots, another soap opera on the Oprah Winfrey Network.

Do you think that Shari and Plays marriage would have endured if the unconfirmed rumor that Play was unfaithful was not true?